Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Nicole wrote in today. Many thanks for the photos and the update!************Here's my story:

I earned a BA (Int'l Business/Finance) at Howard University in Washington , DC . I stayed in DC after college working and traveling for a professional association. At the same time, I opened a coffee house/art gallery with my husband-to-be (Bruce). We closed the store in '96, but I am still working in IT consulting. I'm an Oracle DBA, but also design and implement data warehouse/business intelligence solutions.

I've been married 13 years and have a 10 year old daughter.

Photography has always been my passion. In 2005 I had an exhibit in the Governor's gallery at the state capitol in Santa Fe , NM and I do some freelance work when time allows. I loved taking photos for the school yearbook and have great memories of Mr. Schwerin's photography class. He seemed to have a perpetually full coffee cup in his hand and threw erasers when he was angry (usally when kids kept exposing whole rolls of film and tossing coins in the fixer).

I've attached three photos: one of Kim Vietch (circa'85), another of me, Sydney Abram and Jeff Keys at graduation, and one of my daughter a few years ago when we were overrun by millions of cicadas.

NGHS ‘86 Connections:· I have kept in touch with Kim Vietch Hauxhurst by snail mail for years.· Sydney Abram Taylor earned a BA at Rice and MBA at Michigan . She's moved around the country, but currently lives in Atlanta with her husband. She works for Coca Cola. She keeps in touch with Connie Gonzalez who I understand is married with 2 kids and living in Vacaville .· Jeffery Keys did undergrad at Berkeley and earned his MBA at UCLA. He's been working in finance between LA and NY. Currently manages a private equity fund in NY and lives in NJ with his wife and 3 kids.· I caught up with Kathleen McAuliffe probably 8 years ago in Charlottesville , VA where she was living at the time. She was an Episcopal minister; married with an infant son.

Interestingly two of my daughter's teachers have had a NGHS connection. One is Sandhya Rajan (‘91??) and the other is not a NGHS grad, but is a good friend of Bart Hummer. I've seen Shawn White ('85) and Kim Lassair (’87) each a couple of times. Shawn lives in North Carolina with his wife and kids. Kim is here in DC.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

I happened to come across the NGHS86 site purely by chance. I wasn’t even trying to look up anything NGHS, Walnut Creek , etc, related, yet some how I ended up there. I have to say it’s been a blast reading all the posts from everyone. Thanks for the memories!

Just a quick summary of my life the past 22 years.

After high school, I also ended up at UC Berkeley (along with 40 or so other people from our class, none of which, ok there were 3 or 4 exceptions, I ever ran into during my time there). In 1991 I graduated with a BA in Political Science. About a year after graduating from Berkeley , I ended up working in a town just north of Venice, Italy. My dad knew the managing director of a company that manufactured fractional horsepower motors (the kind that operate washing machines, dishwashers, etc) and he suggested that I write to him to see if I could spend a year working there. Well, I ended up working for the financial controller looking through ream after ream of printouts trying to pick out anomalies in the data.

At the time I thought I’d just spend a year in Italy and then go back to the Bay Area but as my year in Italy drew to a close, I decided to go teach English and German in Central Europe. Having studied Political Science, and since it was the early 90’s, Central Europe was too hard for me to resist. So, I ended up in Budapest teaching English and German at a technical high school. At the time most schools in Central Europe were transitioning from mandatory Russian lessons to English or German. It wasn’t that the school I worked for was looking for qualified teachers to teach English but rather that they wanted somebody that the Russian teachers, who were being retrained to become English and German teachers, could practice with. Although I did have a full class load, I can’t say that I was a very effective teacher for the kids. Couple the fact that I was not a qualified teacher (and didn’t speak much Hungarian at the beginning) with the fact that during this transition period, the grades the kids earned in English or German didn’t get calculated into their GPA’s (ie, most, not all, didn’t really care about whether they learned something or not)…..well, you get the idea.

Again, I thought that I would spend a year in Budapest and then go back to California , but as the year drew to a close I decided to pursue an MBA in Hungary. I ended up studying at the Budapest University of Economic Sciences (formerly known as the Karl Marx University of Economics) for 2 years and had the time of my life. I met an exchange student from the Netherlands while in Budapest and after my time at the university was over, I ended up moving to the Netherlands to be with her.

So, I lived in Amsterdam for about 11 years. While in Amsterdam I worked for a company called Trane where I did inventory management and ended up traveling throughout Europe . This lasted for about 6 years, the last year of which I spent shutting down about 13 warehouses and, surprise!, I worked my way out of a job! (Yes, I did see that coming!) I then ended up working for a San Jose based company called Novellus Systems where I also did the European inventory management. Both jobs were a blast and I learned a lot about logistics during that time.

After about 10 ½ years living in sin my girlfriend and I finally got married. Prior to getting married we were already contemplating our next step and finally, after considering many different places (yes, including the Bay Area) we finally decided that we would move to Australia . We have now been in Brisbane , Australia for a year this month and don’t regret coming here. …….and all I ever wanted to do was to go to Italy for a year!

I don’t see many people from high school and the ones I do, I don’t see very often nor have contact with very often, but contact we do have on occasion. When we do see each other it is like the years in between just melt away and that we haven’t been apart at all. They know who they are and should know that I miss them dearly.

Well, that’s part of my story. It’s been amazing to read all of yours and to read about where you have been and what you have done over the years. I see that at least 1 other person from our class is in Australia. Are there any others?

If you ever find yourself in Brisbane , Australia please drop me a line. berndmartiniATgmail.com I’d be happy to put you up for a few nights. Or just to meet up with old (class)mates and have a few stubbies one arvo!

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Hi! Yes, I am in Real Estate and I did make it to the reunion! It was agreat time and so nice to see everyone. I think it is great that youstarted this Blog and thank you to Elizabeth Bacher for notifying me ofit! (and unfortunately, I am one of the mystery kids in the CastleRock, Mrs. Glenn's 4th Grade Class! scary!)

Monday, September 1, 2008

According to Mike S., "Everyone Googles themselves eventually." Based on this axiom, I'm going to bore everyone by posting the names, all 255, of those alumni who possibly do not know about this site. Perhaps they will also search terms such as:

Northgate High School, Walnut Creek, Class of '86, Class of 1986, Mrs. Thiele (kidding)...and then find us that way.

Remember, anyone who wants me to delete non-publicly available information from this site is welcome to send me an email.

Site Stats: We have 95 updates posted. There are 12 people who have either emailed or posted in comments but haven't sent in an update yet. There are about 7 who have posted on the NGHS Classmates.com site, but not here.

Of the remaining ~250 alums, I have email addresses for about 41, snail mail addresses for about 190, and no information whatsoever for about 25. Of those 25, I know at least one was at the reunion. I know a lot of people who have posted here are in contact with these folks, so I'm sure there are many who are not really interested in this, or at least prefer to stay behind the scenes, as it were.

About Me

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Welcome to the Northgate Class of '86 Blog

Greetings! This year most of us will turn 40. We have been out of high school longer than half of our lives. Seems like a good time to reflect on the past. Now that it has been over 25 years since we entered our first year of high school, I thought I would make an attempt to help people reconnect, even if it is just over the web.

It's true, I missed the 20 year reunion, and I looked at the Classmates.com site to see who was on there. I think it is completely lame. So I thought instead people could email me their info and I can post it on this site.

Feel free to send:mini-blurb/biocontact info if you wantphoto (then and now?)

Also: stories, old photos, burning questions, etc.No stalkers!

spinifex67 AT yahoo.com

please put NGHS86 in the subject line, and in the email mention your high school name if it has changed.